Summer

Over-ripe strawberries fill the mouth with sweet juice. So good.

Combe Gibbet on Gallows Down - maintenance.

The old piece of orange binder twine has been changed for grey wire! (see Feb 09 blog) The gallows stands on a Neolithic long barrow dating to about 3700BC, presumably still full of very old bones as it hasn't been excavated.

Tawny Owl

Who would want to do this? I found it coincidentally on Gallows Down last year.

Trike

A poignant moment watching it crash onto unwanted metal jumbled in a skip, at the tip, this favoured possession red and white upside down, discarded without his consent. THEN, the local kids on bikes thought it cool that it could pedal backwards. He tipped into a bed of nettles and didn't cry. He loved the bow wave through every puddle, but he never learned the brakes. NOW, he's grown up and it's forgotten, but not by me.

Witchcraft and Wizardry

The thought of Witches and Wizards taking over their church may not appeal to some Christians, but at St Paul's Church in Hammersmith, London, it's happened. Harry Potter has invaded. The church is swathed in a protective cover during renovations and sells the space for advertising, so even adverts for the latest Potter film, 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' are obviously welcome.

Socks

Cameras are getting so small that Canon have started making knitted baby socks for them.

Woodpecker

We thought it was injured at first, shuffling across the crazy paving in its red black and white plumage, but it was a fledgling, a baby woodpecker that had yet to learn to fly. Comical on the path on its short legs it went like a clockwork climbing toy straight from the ground up one of the Goat Willow's six trunks, probing cracks in the bark for food. Perhaps it might just survive.
In the evening it was settled three feet up the thick stem of a shrub, eyeing up the peanut feeder with its swarm of fledgling tits, but unable to get there without flight. I watched it for a long time, but it seemed to have settled for the night, and when I walked past a yard away, it watched me but stayed put in the foliage. Yes, it might just survive.
I looked out a few minutes later to see if it was OK. A sudden flurry under the bush and a black-as-night cat shot away through the hedge. The woodpecker was gone.